How to Create a Wedding Slideshow Using iMovie

Updated on March 15, 2012

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Many couples want their friends and family to see pictures leading up to their wedding. Wedding costs are extremely expensive and creating your own slideshow will guarantee your satisfaction as well as save you money! The average cost of a professional creating a slideshow is about $400. Save this money and use it on your honeymoon.

Step 1: Import images to your hard drive. Either scan the images or upload them from your digital camera. Put all of the images in a folder on your desktop.

Step 2: Drag the folder with all of your images into iPhoto. Depending on how many pictures you have, this many take a few minutes. You must import the photos into iPhoto in order to access them in iMovie.

Step 3: Open iMovie. Click File > New Project. Name the project something easy for you to remember. Use None as the theme. Click Create.

Step 4: Create Your Project. You should now have an empty project on iMovie waiting for you to create your slideshow. Go to the far right of the project menu and you will see an icon that looks like a camera. It is second from the left next to the music icon. Click on the camera icon > Last Import. Now all of the images you want to include in your slideshow should be in this preview menu.

Step 5: Add the photos to your slideshow. Simply click on and drag each photo individually that you want in your slideshow up to where it says "Drag media here to create a new project". By default, each image will show for 4 seconds. You can preview your slideshow by pressing the spacebar on your keyboard. You can also stop it by pressing the spacebar again. You can adjust this by clicking on the bottom left corner of the thumbnail and clicking "Clip Adjustments".

Every image is also automatically set to have Key Burns. Key Burns make the image appear to be slowly zooming in and out. It makes the show more exciting. However, you will need to adjust this from time to time. Simply click on "Clip Adjustments" again in the bottom left corner of the thumbnail and click "Cropping, Key Burns, and Rotation". After you have clicked this, go over to the preview menu on the top right of iMovie and adjust the Key Burns the way you want them. You can also click on "Fit" if you just want the whole image to appear without Key Burns.

Note: If you want to batch upload the pictures into the iMovie editor press down and hold "Shift" on your keyboard and click all of the images you want to include in the slide show. You must drag all of the images selected into the editor.

Step 6: Adding Text, Transitions, and Music. iMovie is relatively simple to use. Simply click on the text icon and drag and drop the text menu you want to use into the slideshow. It works the same with music and transitions. Use the "Clip Adjustments" menu to make any corrections to these items.

In the matter of a few hours, you can create a lovely slideshow! The best part is that it will be exactly the way you want it.

Step 7: Exporting the Slideshow. Whether you want to upload your new slideshow to YouTube or just to your desktop, iMovie makes this simple and easy. Simply click on "Share" and then whatever you want to do with your slideshow. If you want to burn your slideshow to a disk you must first export your desktop or iDVD. iDVD will allow you to make a menu to burn your slideshow. If you just export the movie to your desktop I highly recommend exporting in "HD". This will allow you to have the clearest slideshow possible.